Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality

What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain. She describes the "neurobiological platform of bonding" that, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values, has led to human styles of moral behavior. The result is a provocative genealogy of morals that asks us to reevaluate the priority given to religion, absolute rules, and pure reason in accounting for the basis of morality.

Consciousness Explained

The national bestseller chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 1991 is now available as an audiobook. The author of Brainstorms, Daniel C. Dennett replaces our traditional vision of consciousness with a new model based on a wealth of fact and theory from the latest scientific research.

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts

How does the brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state.

A groundbreaking investigation of the brain's hidden logic behind our strangest behaviors and of how conscious and unconscious systems interact in order to create our experience and preserve our sense of self.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

In a book that is both groundbreaking and accessible, Daniel C. Dennett, whom Chet Raymo of The Boston Globe calls "one of the most provocative thinkers on the planet", focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day.

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

Most people, including many policy makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers, have encouraged us to be more empathetic - to feel the pain and pleasure of others. Yale researcher and author Paul Bloom argues that this is a mistake. Far from leading us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it and draw upon a more distanced compassion.

Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

Self Comes to Mind is a nuanced and original chronicle of the evolution of the human brain. It reveals how the brain's development of a self becomes a challenge to nature's indifference and opens the way for the appearance of culture, a radical break in the course of evolution.

Consciousness and the Social Brain

What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. In Graziano's theory, the machinery that attributes awareness to others also attributes it to oneself. Damage that machinery and you disrupt your own awareness. Graziano discusses the science, the evidence, the philosophy, and the surprising implications of this new theory.

Life’s Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos

The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells - assemblies of otherwise "dead" molecules - come to life, and together constitute a living being? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.

A Synthetic Biologist says:"For biologists to learn single molecule biophysics"

Logic: A Very Short Introduction

Logic is often perceived as having little to do with the rest of philosophy, and even less to do with real life. In this lively and accessible introduction, Graham Priest shows how wrong this conception is. He explores the philosophical roots of the subject, explaining how modern formal logic deals with issues ranging from the existence of God and the reality of time to paradoxes of probability and decision theory. Along the way, the basics of formal logic are explained in simple, non-technical terms, showing that logic is a powerful and exciting part of modern philosophy.

The Meaning of Human Existence

Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called “the rainbow colors” around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Edward O. Wilson bridges science and philosophy to create a 21st century treatise on human existence. Once criticized for his over-reliance on genetics, Wilson unfurls here his most expansive and advanced theories on human behavior, recognizing that, even though the human and spider evolved similarly, the poet’s sonnet is wholly different than the spider’s web.

Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction

"The last great mystery for science," consciousness has become a controversial topic. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction challenges listeners to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are opening up these debates, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers.

The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition

The Myth of Mirror Neurons, neuroscientist Gregory Hickok reexamines the mirror neuron story and finds that it is built on a tenuous foundation - a pair of codependent assumptions about mirror neuron activity and human understanding. Drawing on a broad range of observations from work on animal behavior, modern neuroimaging, neurological disorders, and more, Hickok argues that the foundational assumptions fall flat in light of the facts.

Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity: Revised & Expanded

In this honest appraisal of his journey from believer to atheist, the author carefully explains the experiences and the reasoning process that led him to reject religious belief. The original edition of this book was published in 2006 and reissued in 2008. Since that time, Loftus has received a good deal of critical feedback from Christians and skeptics alike. In this revised and expanded edition, the author addresses criticisms of the original, adds new argumentation and references, and refines his presentation.

Life: The Leading Edge of Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Anthropology, and Environmental Science

Scientists' understanding of life is progressing more rapidly than at any point in human history, from the extraordinary decoding of DNA to the controversial emergence of biotechnology. Featuring pioneering biologists, geneticists, physicists, and science writers, Life explains just how far we've come - and takes a brilliantly educated guess at where we're heading.

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete.

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.

The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?

Freedom Evolves

Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.

The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant: The Complete Work Plus an Overview, Chapter by Chapter Summary and Author Biography!

The Critique of Pure Reason is a work that examines the faculty of reason and the qualities inherent in human thought. Before this time the influence of the knower on that which was sought to be known was not considered in a thorough and developed manner. Kant attempted with this critique to establish a limit to the knowable based on the nature of human cognition. His work was an attempt to address the failings in philosophy and metaphysics and provide a solid foundation for the proper use of reason to expand knowledge.

Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter

As physicists work toward completing a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The "theory of everything" that appears to be emerging includes everything but us: the feelings, meanings, consciousness, and purposes that make us (and many of our animal cousins) what we are.

The Great Illusion: The Myth of Free Will, Consciousness, and the Self

This book presents research that supports the naturalistic stance that the mind is identical to the brain. The author argues that if one were to look at the idea that the mind is the brain, then it follows logically that free will must be an illusion, that there can be no consciousness separate from the brain, and that there can be no substantial self that exists independently from the brain. He further argues that there can be no such thing as absolute moral responsibility.

The Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions

Conventional wisdom suggests there is a sharp distinction between emotion and reason. Emotions are seen as inferior, disruptive, primitive, and even bestial forces. These 24 remarkable lectures suggest otherwise-that emotions have intelligence and provide personal strategies that are vitally important to our everyday lives of perceiving, evaluating, appraising, understanding, and acting in the world.

The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies, and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.

Publisher's Summary

A trailblazing philosopher's exploration of the latest brain science - and its ethical and practical implications.

What happens when we accept that everything we feel and think stems not from an immaterial spirit but from electrical and chemical activity in our brains? In this thought-provoking narrative - drawn from professional expertise as well as personal life experiences - trailblazing neurophilosopher Patricia S. Churchland grounds the philosophy of mind in the essential ingredients of biology. She reflects with humor on how she came to harmonize science and philosophy, the mind and the brain, abstract ideals and daily life.

Offering lucid explanations of the neural workings that underlie identity, she reveals how the latest research into consciousness, memory, and free will can help us reexamine enduring philosophical, ethical, and spiritual questions: What shapes our personalities? How do we account for near-death experiences? How do we make decisions? And why do we feel empathy for others? Recent scientific discoveries also provide insights into a fascinating range of real-world dilemmas - for example, whether an adolescent can be held responsible for his actions and whether a patient in a coma can be considered a self.

Churchland appreciates that the brain-based understanding of the mind can unnerve even our greatest thinkers. At a conference she attended, a prominent philosopher cried out, "I hate the brain; I hate the brain!" But as Churchland shows, he need not feel this way. Accepting that our brains are the basis of who we are liberates us from the shackles of superstition. It allows us to take ourselves seriously as a product of evolved mechanisms, past experiences, and social influences. And it gives us hope that we can fix some grievous conditions, and when we cannot, we can at least understand them with compassion.

What the Critics Say

"Patricia Churchland may be the world’s leading neuro-philosopher today, but she also hails from humble beginnings in rural Canada. And that plainspoken farm girl, that second self, is on full display in this beautiful, unpretentious, enchanting exploration of mind, morals, and the meaning of life." (Owen Flanagan, author of The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World)

of other neo-Darwinean evolutionary theorists, such as Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Robert Wright, Churchland argues here, with good cause and good evidence, that the self indeed arises, solely and without aid, from the brain. How exactly that happens, of course, remains a mystery, though there is good scientific evidence for believing that it is so. If this book has a flaw, it is not in its science, but rather in its approach--and one can read it in the title "Touching A Nerve." Churchland, like Dawkins and Dennett, often waves the flag a bit too high and too wildly, being a bit too aggressive against unseen (and probably nonexistent) enemies of her theories. All right, Jerry Fallwell might not take to the idea, but he probably isn't going to be reading this book anyway. If I could say anything to Dennett, Dawkins, and in this case, Churchland, it would be "how about you just calm down about the religious right and do science, believing it will speak for itself to the logical--whereas all the blustering in the world won't do a thing in regard to the illogical." Notwithstanding, the book is still well-done and is a fine addition to the growing neo-Darwinean canon.

The best understanding comes about by talking about what we know. There is no explanatory power in invoking the supernatural when trying to explain anything including the problem of consciousness. The idea of a soul to explain consciousness adds nothing to our understanding. This book looks at how we no longer need the Cartesian duality of the mind and the brain in order to explain how we think.

This book looks at the 'hard problem' of consciousness and goes about systematically explaining why it should never be considered unsolvable or classified as the 'hard problem' and how significant progress is currently being made in the field and for which is best explained to layman by a Neuro-Philosopher such as the author is instead of by a neuroscientist.

She writes in a very conversational manner and excels at story telling. The book really comes alive when she gives real life stories from her past. But, make no mistake, she doesn't dance around explaining difficult concepts about evolution, genetics, brain functions, and even the common fallacies you'll often hear which over simplify about race (such as the truly vile book by Nicolas Wade, 'A Troublesome Inheritance'), gender identity and free will. She did point out in the book that Daniel Dennett (whose books I love and have listened to on Audible) is wrong when he says that consciousness needs language. I still love Dennett but Churchland is right on the points she made.

Overall a very sophisticated book written in a conversational manner even while covering hard to understand topics.

An approachable account of what the findings in neuroscience mean about the way we see ourselves. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in the subject in particular to those with an optimistic outlook.

The feeling for something, and the sense of being something are hallmarks of human experience. The nature of the self that knows these things is perhaps the most ancient discussion in the humanities. What I find remarkable, as someone who finished graduate school in the early 1980's, is the tremendous sense that somehow, finally, we are about to really understand the brain. The last thirty years has seen remarkable expansion of knowledge in the fields we collectively call "neuroscience."This concise work by Dr. Churchland, explores neuroscientific contributions to many of the old arguments about the nature of the self with particular attention to moral philosophy, and how we come to be the persons we are. While clearly versed in the scientific material, and able to draw appropriate implications from the research (in stark contrast to some authors who seem simply carried away by the implications of the science) the narrative (performed gracefully by Karen Saltus) is down home and even folksy. Interwoven with the science are teaching stories from a rural Canadian background. The stories illustrate the author's invitation to view the world (including the sense of self) as phenomena of mind, emerging from our biological brains. In a worldview grounded in biology and the philosophy of science, she finds the commonsense view that we are unique creatures with brains which are constructed by evolutionary processes that leave us with much in common. She finds herself personally comfortable, and I would say hopeful, that this understanding does not amount to "paradise lost," but rather embraces new possibilities in appreciating complexity and difference.

If you could sum up Touching a Nerve in three words, what would they be?

Neuroscience for everbody

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

“Rock on Berti!” (Bertrand Russell). I like being able to cry at the ending of Anna Karenina and Dr. Schiwago, but I also enjoy shedding a tear or two after the final paragraphs of a well-written science book.

Neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland (according to Wikipedia an eliminative materialist), composes beautifully clear, straightforward sentences, and, in true story telling style, transports us to the cutting edge of neuroscience. I decided to finally read Patricia Churchland to protect myself against the temptations of quantum neuroscience, for which I have a strange liking that may well be more artistic than scientific.

The book (I actually listened to it as an audiobook while jogging and cleaning) summarizes the current state of neuroscience including the latest research into consciousness, memory, and free will, as Churchland examines their relationship to contemporary philosophical, ethical, and spiritual questions. There is nothing breathtakingly new to somebody who follows the field on a regular basis; for (neuro)scientists quite a bit is old hat, e.g. how neurons work. Yet it is written in such a comprehensible style that it rejuvenates and replenishes the old memory bank – very useful for science journalists.

There are a couple of topics I slightly disagree with, and I find her somewhat conservative (e.g. difference between man and woman). But I guess if I want a more visionary approach I should read science fiction.

I liked the way she ties her ideas to her upbringing on a farm, bringing highflying neurophilosophical thoughts down to earth. My attention wandered when it came to paragraphs obviously directed at science-skeptics. I guess this is directed more towards US readers. In short: a great (audio-)book for anybody, especially laypeople interested in a good overview of neuroscience. Rock on Pat.

This is a heroic attempt to summarize what we know about who we are, why we're here, and why we do the things we do. It is an attempt to "stand in the truth" which is very challenging to our deeply held desire to be metaphysical beings or something other than biological brains in an all too physical body.

What other book might you compare Touching a Nerve to and why?

The God Delusion, also written by a biologist (Richard Dawkins), also resisting the pull to superstition and pseudoscience.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment

Any additional comments?

This book is thoughtful if slightly superficial.It discusses important subjects but the narration is suited to cosmetic sales or historical novels. She tries to add inappropriate excitement and sexiness. Let the words convey the meaning.

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